


I Found Love (Where It Wasn't Supposed To Be)

by bellarke



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Soulmates AU, Steve/Natasha friendship, Wanda/Sam friendship, post AOU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-21
Updated: 2015-07-21
Packaged: 2018-04-10 13:13:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4393277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellarke/pseuds/bellarke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It can’t be her. </p><p>Steve’s eyes wash over the unmistakable mark on the inside of her wrist a second time. </p><p> </p><p>  <i>It can’t be her.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	I Found Love (Where It Wasn't Supposed To Be)

**Author's Note:**

> Alrighty. This is my first published attempt at writing both Steve and Wanda, and their relationship. I gotta say, I'm completely in love with the idea of these two in the MCU. I don't know much about them together in the comics, but what I do know, I love.
> 
> I wouldn't consider this my best, but I've had it sitting in my drafts and I really wanted to get it out. Hopefully it's easy to follow and there aren't too many mistakes.
> 
> Title from Amber Run's 'I Found'.
> 
> Hope you enjoy, and comments are always welcome!

He sees it for the first time when they’re leaving China.

It can’t be her.

The familiar faded stain on her skin, a mirror of his own. Steve’s eyes wash over the unmistakable mark on the inside of her wrist a second time. He feels his own mark burn under his sleeve, and curls his fist to distract from the feeling.

It can’t be her.

This wreck of a girl, with tear-stained cheeks and a broken heart who’s already lost her other half, like he’s already lost his. This girl who is all quiet, boiling rage with powers akin to Gods, who aches everyday at the loss of her brother, who grits her teeth and speaks so little and keeps to herself, who won’t let anybody in, let alone him –

_It can’t be her._

She turns rapidly on her heel, pins him with such a look that he feels like he might collapse under the weight of it. She’s so much all at once, so many things he can’t put his finger on. She absently traces her fingertips over her mark. It’s burning for her too. Wanda’s eyes narrow. Her eyes remain on his for a moment, and something in Steve draws his hand to his mark too.

When he touches it, he feels her.

She jolts suddenly, and he feels that too. She lets go of her wrist, and the feeling is gone. Steve does the same. He doesn’t know what to do. Doesn’t know what to say, or how to talk to her. He doesn’t know this girl.

Somehow he feels like he needs to.

Her gaze moves on. She tucks her hair behind her ears, and in the flurry of officers and medics that arrive on the scene next, Steve loses her in the crowd.

*

‘It’s a soul mark,’ Natasha explains three days later, examining Wanda’s wrist. She turns it over a few times, runs her fingers over it. ‘They’re rare.’

‘Not everyone has one,’ Wanda gathers.

She’s only now worked up the courage to ask. The question has been weighing heavy on her chest since she touched the mark three days earlier, and suddenly she’d been looking at herself through another’s eyes. His eyes. Wanda pulls her arm back slowly. Her other hand hovers over it, her fingers twitching in the air over her wrist. She wonders if she’ll feel it again. If she’ll feel… _him_.

‘I…’ she begins, but falters when she looks up and finds Natasha watching her with a curious look on her face.

‘Do you have one?’ she asks Natasha, who shakes her head.

Wanda swallows. She doesn’t think of herself as someone who wears everything on her sleeve, or her face. But this is Natasha’s skill; this is her expertise. She knows people, she reads them; she understands them. Wanda wonders if she even needs to speak, but Natasha remains silent, so Wanda does.

‘You and the captain are friends?’ she asks.

Natasha nods.

‘You have seen his mark.’

Another nod.

‘It’s just like yours,’ Natasha says.

Wanda takes a deep breath. She presses her fingertips to the mark, waits a moment.

There he is.

‘I can feel him sometimes,’ she says very quietly.

There’s an ache in her chest immediately. A lump in her throat that isn’t hers, a sadness in her heart that’s alien and familiar all at once. She feels broken, like half of her is missing, and then she’s seeing it. A man with dark hair, a soldier’s uniform, a train moving through snowy mountains –

\- and then he falls, and Wanda feels her heart split in two.

She gasps, and her fingers fly from her wrist. Tears wet her cheeks quickly and she wipes them away. They are not hers to cry; this is not her loss to mourn. She looks around to the door, the one that leads off to the dorms, where she knows her captain is.

*

‘I don’t understand,’ she says, two weeks later.

Steve knows she didn’t mean to pry. Hell, Steve’s two or three times looked in on her without thinking, and seen a couple of memories she probably didn’t want to share. More than that, he’s seen _her._ Exposed, in pain, still grieving the ghost of her brother, of her parents, of her country.

But since the night she saw Bucky fall, things are… different. He feels like she knows him now, and he hasn’t freely given anything away.

She pulls the shawl tighter around her shoulders, folds her arms around herself against the chill of the night air. Steve does similarly, burying his fists in his pockets.

‘What aren’t you sure of? We can go over it again –’

‘No,’ she says sharply. ‘I understand all that.’

She begins towards him, heading for the doors to go back inside. Steve knows she’s frustrated. Things between have been tense since she saw Bucky’s death – or supposed death, Steve guesses – and, admittedly, he’s avoided her. She doesn’t deserve that, but somehow he finds it difficult to look her in the eye.

‘Then what?’ he asks, turning to follow her as she strolls passed him.

He catches wind of the smell of her hair, and he surprises himself by enjoying it. They’re not quite touching, but the hair on his arm is standing to attention at the fact that they’re sharing space. He wonders when it started happening, but he doesn’t remember a time when it wasn’t.

She stops short of the door, and he does the same. She looks up at him.

‘You. I don’t understand why it is you that I am bonded to. Why it is you I am expected to love.’

‘I don’t expect you to love me.’

She doesn’t seem appeased at this, and Steve doesn’t blame her. He’s not sure what he expects either, from himself or from her. The marks they bear, whatever they do, whatever is meant to be… he’s not sure he buys into any of it. Everything he’s had, he’s had through hard work. He’s surrounded by sacrifice; has been all his life. Bucky, Peggy, his parents – he’s had to let everyone go.  This mark seems to think itself important enough to keep someone with him forever.

Wanda watches him through narrowed eyes, like she’s trying to figure him out.

‘Then what do you expect, Captain?’ she asks quietly.

She takes a step closer. Suddenly the night around them seems so quiet. Steve wonders if she can hear his heart; it’s beating loud and hard with every inch closer she gets. She tilts her head a little to the right, and her big eyes bore into his own. She’s much closer now… getting ever closer…

‘What do you want?’

‘I…’ he starts, barely making the sound as his eyes fix on hers, and drop to her lips.

He feels drawn, unsettled on his feet, and for all he knows he could be floating with her somewhere in the air and he just wouldn’t know. He’s not sure he’d care. He’s moving his face down to hers, like some force of nature is bending them together. Like those marks on their arms actually mean a damn thing.

She closes her eyes, and so does he, and for a moment it all seems right.

Steve stops.

‘What do _you_ want?’ he whispers, challenging. 

Wanda opens her eyes. She takes him in, face so close they can feel each other’s heat, noses almost brushing near enough to send sparks through them both. She bites her bottom lip and drops her gaze to the floor. Another chill encircles them. She pulls on her shawl again, her wrist turned inwards so Steve can’t glance the mark.

He wonders if hers is burning like his.

She doesn’t say a word, just slips quietly passed him and through the glass doors. Her shoes clack on the tiled floor.

Steve breathes, finally. He turns himself outward into the night, the light from the facility behind bathing him against the dark. He scratches behind his ear, takes a beat to consider himself, and then goes inside.

*

Wanda forgets her orders.

She forgets to flank Sam as he comes in from the sky, his aim true as he takes on the guerillas coming at them. She forgets to protect him, doesn’t think twice about going in the opposite direction.

It’s fear, but not fear of the enemy. Not fear of Sam and his machine guns, not fear of not being strong enough, of not being brave enough. It’s the fear of a single gunshot somewhere behind her, followed by a cry of agony that is distinctly her captain’s.

Her Steve.

Wanda turns from her duty and watches him collapse, and suddenly she’s bubbling. She’s brimming and boiling with her red rage and it explodes out when she calls for him. He’s lost in the crimson haze that surrounds them all, and then it’s just ringing in her ears as Wanda’s power brings down the deserted buildings around them.

When the dust settles, she goes to him.

Rhodey and Sam hover somewhere above, and Vision had the good sense to pull Natasha out too. Then, out of the dusty haze around them, with their enemies lying dead on the ground, Steve limps towards her.

The relief is overwhelming. Wanda breathes out, a smile spreading her lips wide. But he doesn’t smile back, just pulls his helmet off with a struggle and leans on Sam as he comes to assist.

‘Call in the jet,’ he says, trying to catch his breath. ‘Let’s get the hell out of here.’

He walks right by her, doesn’t bother to lift his gaze to hers.

The rest of the team do the same. Even Sam, whose kind eyes and kinder heart are always open to Wanda, walks away from her.

*

Later, Steve scolds her.

She’s been sitting alone in the quinjet garage since they returned and rushed Steve off to Dr. Cho. She waited for news, and the Vision was polite enough to inform her that the captain would make a full and speedy recovery. Wanda is able to breathe normally now, until Steve finds her.

‘What the hell happened back there?’ he demands from the doorway, fists clenched at his sides.

Wanda springs to her feet, startled, and gathers herself in an attempt to offer an explanation. She doesn’t have one, but she knows that won’t be good enough for that. Steve may be her… whatever he is, her soul bond, her soul mate, but first and foremost he is her captain. He’s everyone’s captain, and he’s responsible for all of their lives, even when they don’t hold him accountable at all.

Wanda wrings her hands in front of her, unable to look him in eye.  

‘I asked you a question.’

He comes closer.

He’s never spoken to her like this before, with such disdain. She can scarcely look at his face; the disappointment, the anger sitting on it makes her feel ill. She still can’t come up with an answer worthy of her mistake, and she knows she made a big one. In the line of duty, wherein she swore to remain calm and as part of a team, she faltered. She broke, and all because of one man.

All because of him.

She knows it’s eating at him the same way it is her. She touches her wrist, and she can feel it.

Steve marches up to her and grabs her hand, pulling her fingertips away from her mark. She looks up at him then, narrows her eyes and tries to wrench her arm free. He’s strong, and so is she, and they’re locked together as he waits for her answer. The anger is coming off him in waves, and Wanda thinks she could drown in it.

‘You put everyone in danger. What do you have to say for yourself?’

Wanda shoves him back with her right hand and manages to free her left one. She grips her wrist where he was holding her, and for a fleeting moment he looks disgusted with himself. It’s gone as soon as it came, and he’s back to his rage. Wanda turns her coldest eyes on him.

‘Do not speak to me like I am a child.’

‘Natasha barely made it out – the Vision was nearly crushed just trying to get to her. You could have killed one of us, so I’ll ask you again.’

He pauses, fixing her with look that earnest and heated at the same time.

‘What. Happened,’ he spaces out the syllables, making every one count, and Wanda feels the knock of each one against her heart.

Her eyes flicker to the ground, and she spots the tips of their boots where they touch. Her gaze trails up, and she sees the rip on the trousers of his uniform where the bullet went in and out. She has to ball her fist to keep from reaching out to him. She has to steel herself against the effect he’s having, because she can’t bare it anymore. Can’t bare the disappointment, can’t bare the hurt in his eyes that she would jeopardize the entire team’s lives because of her foolishness. He must know already, she thinks. She felt him earlier, when he was off in the medical wing and she was all alone and she touched her mark. She felt his fear, his confusion and, more than the rest, she felt his love because it was running through her veins just the same way it was running through his.

Finally, she looks up at him.

‘Do you really want to know?’ she asks.

He swallows, then takes a step away from her because he already knows.

Of course he knows.

He looks everywhere but at her, shaking his head slowly. Every motion seems to pain him more than the one before, until eventually he has retreated back to the doorway from where he came. Wanda watches after him, arms wrapped around herself.

‘I can’t separate them,’ she says then, and he stops. He looks back at her.

‘Captain America and Steve Rogers. When we’re out in the world, or at home here, they are always one and the same. My captain.’ She pauses, swallowing to stall and muster the courage.

‘My Steve.’

He turns back, mouth falling open a little.

‘Wanda –’

‘It won’t happen again.’ She stands up straight, clasping her hands behind her back. She stands tall like a soldier, answering to their leader.

‘I promise, Captain.’

She leaves then, heading for the gardens and the lake to take a walk. She needs to clear her head, needs to get away, needs to run…

She needs to be anywhere but near him.

She feels his gaze on her all the way.

*

‘How do I get it off?’ she grills.

She’s pacing, has been for an hour now. Her eyes are wide with pressure and pain and Sam’s not sure how to handle her right now. He’s seen her sad, seen her angry, seen her smile… but never this. Never as lost as she is now, pacing her bedroom at the facility and demanding a way to rid herself of her mark – of _Steve_ , so ingrained in her skin is he.

‘There must be a way to make it go away. Ask Romanoff – ask Natasha!’ she corrects herself quickly, wringing her hands.

‘Dr. Cho can remove it – the Cradle!’

‘It doesn’t work that way,’ Sam says calmly.

He spies the red fields starting to brim at the edges of her fingers, the streams coming from her palms. He wonders if he should be nervous; should be, sure. Isn’t, though. She’s his friend and he knows her well enough by now, or at least he should. Friends know how to handle each other, know how to talk each other down from the ledge, how to comfort one another. But here he is, hands in his pockets like some chump who’s come across a stranger on the bridge that’s having a bad day. All he wants to do is help.

‘I want it gone!’ she cries suddenly, and Sam feels the breeze of her power as it whips him across the chest.

She looks apologetically at him. Her eyes crease at the sides, and she crumples with them onto her bed, sitting on the edge with her head in her hands.

‘I can’t do it,’ she murmurs as Sam takes a seat beside her and pats her back. ‘How could I let this happen?’

She looks up at him then, eyes wet like pools, smudged eyeliner clinging to the creases around her eyelashes. Sam smiles gently at her, moves his arm around to hold her shoulders.

‘I almost killed all of us, because of him.’

‘We know it was an accident,’ Sam says, but she doesn’t hear it.

‘This thing on my wrist is a curse. It puts us all at risk because… because I lov-‘

She looks up at him again, shaking her head. She wipes under one eye.

‘I can’t love him.’

Sam nods.

‘I can’t lose him,’ she says.

*

'Everyone I’ve ever loved…’ Steve says quietly as he leans on the railing outside. ‘I’ve lost.’

Natasha is beside him, and she nudges him in the shoulder.

‘I love you too, buddy,’ she attempts, trying to make him laugh. He manages a smirk for her, but nothing more. There’s a sinking feeling in his stomach, threatening to swallow him whole.

‘I feel like I’ve lost her too,’ he admits a moment later, and Natasha doesn’t say anything.

He feels his friend’s eyes on him, feels her read him like he’s a dusty old classic that she already knows all the words to. Natasha stands up straight, breathing in deep to smell the night air. It’s nice out here, Steve muses. Nicer than Brooklyn.

‘You know,’ Natasha says, and there’s a faint air of regret in her tone. ‘These lives of ours… We could die tomorrow. We almost died a few days back in friendly fire.’

‘It was an accident,’ he warns, eyeing her sideways.

‘I know that,’ she says, as if it’s obvious. ‘All I’m saying is… people like us have to take the good where we can get it, because we don’t get a lot of it.’

Steve looks up at her properly then, and she smirks down at him.

‘You just told me you loved her,’ Natasha says sweetly. ‘Granted, I’ve still been trying to get you to call Sharon but… Wanda’s good. She’s _good_.’

She smiles, pats him on the shoulder, and then leaves him to his thoughts.

*

Steve doesn’t bother checking the clock when he’s woken up. He knows it’s late; he hasn’t been sleeping all that well lately. Most of his time is spent with Sam looking up Bucky, but there are still barely any warm leads. Everything else is cold. He spends time with Maria, going over security and meeting with Fury to determine plans. He hangs out with Natasha and they spar, keep each other on top of their game. He helps with Rhodey’s hand to hand and Vision’s understanding of the people around him.

And then there’s Wanda.

Wanda who he hasn’t been able to look in the eye in a little while. Wanda who keeps her distance because she must thinking the same thing; that they don’t belong together, that they don’t fit, and that they don’t deserve the inevitable disappointment that would come if they tried to make it work.

Wanda’s who’s at his door with bags under her eyes, shivering against the cool night around them.

‘You are a good man, Steve,’ she says.

He’s not sure what to say. He’s never seen her this… unguarded. Trimmed down to an over-sized standard black tee, pair of baggy sweat pants underneath and bare feet that expose wine painted toes. Her hair is brushed back and away from her face.

‘I…’ he begins, but he finds the words don’t come like he thinks they will. He settles for common decency instead, and stands aside so she can come in.

She takes a turn around his bedroom, taking it all in. She eyes the old photographs on the walls, touches a few with her fingertips. She moves to his desk, trailing her hand along the edge like she’s looking for something to anchor herself to the room. She seems to find it, as she stops beside his bed and the cabinet next to the headboard. She gingerly lifts up Steve’s old compass.

It still holds the aging picture of Peggy.

Steve feels the familiar ache rise inside him. The silence is heavy with what he’s missing. Wanda’s sweet voice cuts through.

‘I know her,’ she asks guiltily. ‘I saw you dancing… I saw her when I -’

‘It’s okay,’ Steve holds up his hand to stop her. She looks so ashamed.

Steve sighs. He doesn’t talk about Peggy, not even to Natasha or Sam. It’s a part of him he keeps to himself, something he thinks about when he’s all alone and feeling sorry for himself. He misses Peggy. _God_ , he misses her. Misses who she used to be, the woman he fell in love with so, so long ago. The woman he sees sometimes in his friends, in their strength and their loyalty to each other. He sees her everywhere.

He sees her in Wanda. Sees her passion and her big heart.

Wanda’s looking up at him from where she’s sitting on his bed. He takes a seat next to her, taking the compass from her hands and turning it over in his hands.

‘Peggy Carter,’ he says, and the name feels ever at home on his lips. ‘Peggy.’

He turns to find Wanda watching him with a soft smile on her face.

‘I don’t need a mark on my arm to tell me how you felt about her,’ she says. She inches closer, then drops her voice to a whisper. ‘I felt it.’

Steve is turning the compass over in his hands, like it’s scolding every patch of skin it touches. He stops when Wanda puts her hand in his. He looks up at her, suddenly dazed and unsure if this is because of the marks on their arms, or the fact that it’s Wanda.

It’s _Wanda_ , and why didn’t he see it before?

‘She was a part of me,’ he admits. ‘A big part of who I am now.’

He squeezes her fingers in his own.

‘I’m frightened,’ she says then, and the brutal honesty and heavy weight of her words seem to fill the entire room. Steve feels her intake of breath.

‘Pietro was half of me,’ she says. ‘When he died, so did I. We were bonded, since our birth, and I felt every single bullet and every second of fear that he felt. Everything.’

Steve sees the tears sitting in her eyelashes, but says nothing about them.

‘I’m frightened that, one day, I will feel it again. With you.’

She smiles a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes.

‘Pietro was mine and I was his, and I don’t want you to take that away.’

They both look down at their hands, intertwined so perfectly all of a sudden. Steve doesn’t remember when he last felt this… peaceful.

‘Peggy was mine. Bucky too… I don’t want to take anything away from you Wanda.’

He turns his head so that his lips graze her temple.

‘We both have ghosts that shouldn’t be ghosts.’

He squeezes her hand, and she squeezes back.

‘How do we move on?’ she asks then, voice quiet as a whisper.

Wanda leans in a little, her head touching his shoulder. Her grip on his hand goes a little slack, and Steve misses the pressure. He goes one more and wraps his arm around her shoulder to hold her close. She turns further into him.

‘We just do,’ he replies, closing his eyes.

*

When he wakes up again later, he checks the clock.

It’s six thirty in the morning, and Wanda is still in his arms.


End file.
